‘Slightly terrifying’: New Elvis movie a big, ambitious effort

Baz Luhrmann’s “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” requires its own category. Not quite a concert film, though filled with Elvis performance footage. Not a documentary, though, the King himself narrates what is essentially his life story.

“Baz was pretty clear, the words ‘concert film’ and ‘documentary’ were taboo,” says the film’s executive producer and editor, Jonathan Redmond, during an interview in Westgate’s top-level “Elvis Suite,” aka Imperial Sky Villa. “The term we’re kind of using is ‘Tone Poem,’ that’s meant to be a little more abstract, a bit more poetic.”

Redmond also worked on Luhrmann’s “Elvis” 2022 biopic, nominated for an Oscar for best film editing. In that process, the creative team uncovered dozens of hours of priceless Elvis concert and rehearsal footage. The “Tone Poem” concept was born. “EPiC” was top screen at International Theater on Feb. 10, ahead of a Feb. 27 widespread release (Feb. 20 in IMAX). We caught an early look Feb. 9 at AMC Regal Cinemas at Town Square.

Highlights from my chat with Redmond:

Were you an Elvis fan or aficionado coming into these projects?

I grew up with Elvis’ music as kind of cultural wallpaper. In my youth, I knew who he was, and his music was kind of omnipresent. I grew up in a household where my dad was into classical music, opera. My mother played a lot of Dire Straits, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and contemporary music. But all around, Elvis was this known thing.

The movie focuses on a specific period of Elvis’ shows in Las Vegas and on tour, early ’70s, when he still looked and sounded great. What footage did you have access to?

The main body of footage came from the Warner Bros. ‘salt mines’, from their archives in Kansas, that consisted of 59 hours worth of outtakes from two concert films. The first one, “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is,” is from 1970. The second one, “Elvis on Tour,” was from 1972.

The attention to detail with that much volume is remarkable. You have many cutaways to the crowd, gazing and screaming, and of Elvis giving looks to his band and musicians that is really revealing. I felt much of the rehearsal footage, him working with the band and singers, was as moving as the stage show.

My favourite stuff was the rehearsal stuff. He just looked so natural, so relaxed, and I loved that. We didn’t shy away from anything, because he’s doing stuff that maybe Colonel Tom Parker wouldn’t have used back in the original films. You know, stuff of Elvis goofing around or cracking jokes, breaking the fourth wall with the filmmakers at the time, we just leaned into that.

There was so much music, more than 400 songs, Elvis said, to choose from. Is there anything you found that you liked and couldn’t use?

There was one song we couldn’t use that we couldn’t get publishing for, “It’s Now or Never.”

One of his biggest hits. What happened?

Well, it’s one of his favourite songs, but we have never seen him actually perform it. Then we found this little bit of rehearsal, and he looks amazing, gold guitar and gold jewelry, and he looks incredible, and he sings incredibly well in rehearsal. It wasn’t the full song, but it was enough to use. But some publishing legal dispute didn’t allow it.

I’m curious about the narrator, the voice-over in the film. I’ve never heard Elvis talk about his career. Where did that come from?

It’s during “Elvis on Tour” in 1972, when (filmmakers) Robert Abel and Pierre Adidge kind of ambushed Elvis after one of his rehearsal sessions with a camera. So when he’s talking on camera, and we use a bit of that. There’s an 11-minute interview where he’s talking about stuff, it’s musical, interesting background and stuff like that. And then they do the follow-up, audio-only recording for 40, 42 minutes, something like that. The interesting thing about those two recordings is that the filmmakers didn’t use either of them really in the film.

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